Barring a miracle Chester FC will be playing National League football next season, but what an awful way to achieve it.

The Blues made Sutton United look like Barcelona and put in their worst display of the season from a game when they needed to be at their best.

A performance that, for 80 minutes, lacked heart, passion and the stomach for a fight ensured the simplest of victories for Paul Doswell’s men.

Results elsewhere mean that, provided there isn’t a nine-goal swing on the final day, the Blues will be in non-league football’s top tier once more. But this was nothing to celebrate.

Blues boss Jon McCarthy made two changes from the team that lost 3-2 at home to Woking with Lucas Dawson and fit-again James Akintunde starting with Wade Joyce and Liam Davies dropping to the bench.

The Blues needed to come out of the traps with fire in their bellies. They didn’t, though.

The artificial pitch offered no excuse for the way Chester started the game and they were 1-0 down on five minutes when Elliott Durrell was brushed off the ball in the centre of midfield by Nicky Bailey who then fed Adam Coombes who, in turn, bent a well-struck 20-yard effort beyond Alex Lynch.

Blues fans with who were at the Maidstone United horror show earlier in the year, alos on a 3G pitch, could have been forgiven for fearing another capitulation. And they would have been right.

Three minutes later Sutton doubled their advantage when, in acres of space, Adam May cut in from the right and arrowed a 25-yard strike into the top corner. It almost seemed like job done inside the opening 10 minutes.

Chester were abysmal in the opening stages and Kieron Cadogan, Louis John and Jeffrey Monakana all went close to putting the game beyond the reach of the Blues, who offered precious little in the way of fight and passion.

The Blues rarely ventured into the Sutton final third, although Ryan Astles did fire over from distance after a mazy run from the halfway line and Durrell volleyed well over after being teed up by James Alabi.

Sutton were soon back on the offensive, though, and Bailey forced a one-handed save from Lynch when he found himself in acres of space 25 yards out.

And it the third arrived three minutes before the break when captain Jamie Collins curled home an 18-yard free kick after the dangerous Maxime Biamou had been felled by Sam Hughes.

McCarthy opted to bring on Johnny Hunt for the ineffective Dawson at the break but any lingering hopes of mounting some kind of fightback were ended just two minutes after the interval when a searching ball from the left was nodded home with ease by Coombes for his second of the game.

Chester were just as limp as they were in the first half and Biamou and Jack Jebb both went close to extending the lead as the Blues were left chasing shadows against a team for whom the outcome of this game had little relevance.

Sutton were in the mood and the pick of the goals came on 71 minutes when Bailey picked up a loose ball 30 yards out before rasping an unstoppable effort beyond Lynch to further chip away at Chester’s goal difference and painfully fragile confidence.

There was something to cheer for travelling Blues faithful on 79 minutes when Sutton keeper Will Puddy came out of his area to clear, making a hash of it and allowing Alabi to steal in and fire home into an empty net from a tough angle.

And eyebrows were raised three minutes later when Alabi reduced the arrears further. The big striker cut in from the right and curled a low effort into the bottom corner beyond Puddy, helping the Blues claw back some of their goal difference, which had taken such a hammering, but the damage had been done.

News of York drawing at Woking and Braintree being beaten against Barrow means that Chester will almost certainly be playing National League football next season.